Mark Fell’s performance at the Berghain

A couple of us at Capsule had the good fortune of spending a few days in Berlin  to witness the digital arts event Transmediale, and its sister music festival CTM.

The theme of this year’s Transmediale was ‘Back when Pluto was a planet’ so there was plenty of 90s early 00s references and investigations into the rapid changes in digital art and communications. There was also a lot of discussion around paper and publishing, the future of the book and digital book production and distribution. Some really interesting stuff that will no doubt feed into the opening season for the Library of Birmingham, which we are currently programming.

CTM had a pretty vital line up this year with performances by current essentials such as Andy Stott, Dean Blunt and Holly Herndon as well as special events with Pantha du Prince and Capsule favourites People Like Us, Sunno))), Khyam Allami and Eugene Robinson. One highlight was the excellent PAN showcase at Berghain, a line up of wholly distinct artists who made perfect sense of one another, featuring Lee Gamble, Florian Hecker, Jar Moff, Heatsick and Mark Fell and Keith Fullerton Whitman.

Congratulations to the Roadburn team in Tilburg for another amazing edition of their annual celebration of the heavy. We had a blast and saw some incredible performances. Cheers to Jess for the snaps.

Michael Gira performing a mixture of Swans and solo material

Justin Broadrick performing as JK Flesh. Justin had a residency at the festival and also performed as White Static Demon, Final and Jesu

J G Thirlwell’s Manorexia

Barn Owl

Some late night Gnod

J Mascis was at Roadburn perfoming in Witch, but also took part in a stellar ‘Heavy Jam’ along with members of Witch and Earthless

Each year Roadburn come along to Supersonic Festival to DJ and set up shop in the Marketplace. They’ve announced that Jus Osborn of Electric Wizard will curate next year’s Roadburn – more info here http://www.roadburn.com/

Have been meaning to draw your attention to this artwork produced by Drew Millward for the Oxes tour which starts in a couple of weeks time, the Birmingham date is at the Hare & Hounds on Friday 24th of October. We love it! You can check out more of his designs on gigposters.com

While on the subject of poster art here are some other exciting examples of artists who produce gig posters that are worth checking out including Seldon Hunt

and Burlesque Of North America whom we discovered at SXSW a few years ago at Flatstock and ended up parting with a fair bit of cash and now a lack of wall space.

Flatstock is co-presented by the American Poster Institute (API) and South by Southwest (SXSW), and displays the works of more than 100 artists from across North America.

Capsule were invited for the 3rd year running to produce a showcase at this years Sonar Festival in Barcelona. We put forward two Birmingham bands ZX Spectrum Orchestra + Pram, which took place in the Sonar Hall on Thursday 19th of June. Both acts performed to a full to capacity hall (3000 +) with an overwhelming response from the audience, this was our best response yet.

ZX Spectrum Orchestra were recorded live for a show on BBC Radio 1 and interviewed by Rob Da Bank:

ZX Spectrum Orchestra Sonar 2008 – interview by Rob Da Bank

Listen to ZX Spectrum Orchestra
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/robdabank/

We also had a stall in the record and media fare, selling our wares. With thanks to Ben Javens/Pram/ZX Spectrum Orchestra/Jacob + Kate/Dan Davies/Film Ficciones/Geoff Dolman/Juan Rae/Ian Rogers/Katherine Godfrey who all took it in turns to man the stall and promote Birmingham.
We produced ‘Capsules Guide to Birmingham’, a free leaflet which is by no means a definative guide to our fair city but trys to give an alternative view to visitors who will attend Supersonic and to intice those at Sonar. It includes recommendations of things to do/places to stay/eat and shop. It was co-ordinated by Capsule, written by Dan Davies and designed by Ben Javens.

Jenny took some amazing photos from the showcase and the stall which are now on Flickr

The highs n lows:

5 highs
1. Proud moment with 1 in 1 out for Capsule showcase as it was so busy
2. discovering happy hour mojitos (3.50 euros)
3. discovering raspberry mojitos
4. visiting Frederic Mares Museum (Barcelonas equivalent to Pitt Rivers museum)
5. street beer + falafel

5 lows
1. Getting stuck in a lift on the 9th floor of our hotel
2. The windy landing at Birmingham International
3. The van breaking down just as it reached Barcelona
4. 35 degree heat and not knowing how to work the air conditioning and in fact putting on the heating
5. happy hour was only for 2 short hrs a day